people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb

enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer

hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute

you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your

fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall

Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause

they own this fuckin’ place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club...

The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice… Nobody seems to care.

That’s what the owners count on. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at

all! The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue

dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know

the truth... It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.

Ten years later, the veracity of Carlin’s words rings truer than ever. Next year the richest 1% of humans on this planet will own more wealth than the rest of us 99% earth inhabitants combined. And in the ensuing years since Carlin uttered those words, the oligarchic “owners” of this nation care even less about us. Last year a joint Princeton-Northwestern study confirmed Carlin’s blunt assertion, making it official - the United States government is an oligarchy. Our elected representatives serve the interests of the controlling elite that years ago Carlin astutely pointed out owns the government, the Fortune 500 transnational corporations, us and virtually the entire world.

Moreover, further evidence corroborating Carlin’s contention that US citizens are being systematically dumbed down is the fact that every year Americans are testing lower in IQ intelligence. Results from a recent adult competency test given to young people aged 20-34 in 22 different developed nations show that the US came in dead last in both tech proficiency and numeracy and just two from the bottom in literacy. High school graduates in Finland, Japan and the Netherlands equaled the test performance of America’s college graduates. Sadly, the nation once known for its “Yankee ingenuity” that led the world in innovation and technology is lagging further behind the modern world that’s long since caught up and passed us.

How did America get so dumbed down as to always be the last ones to know? In large part Carlin already answered this question in passing. With just six oligarchs owning and controlling the biggest media corporations in the world, already co-opted and merged with the US crime syndicate government in power, controllers of what gets disseminated to the masses as news and information in effect controls how people are perceiving and reacting to the world around them. And as long as the continuous propaganda brainwash keeps bombarding the masses on a daily 24/7 basis with nonstop lies and disinformation, Americans will only continue to be kept in the dark as the last to know what’s really going on. The oligarchs are simply utilizing what’s worked so well for them in the past - in the words of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie

can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political,

economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State

to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by

extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State… The most brilliant propaganda technique

will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must

Recently Europe and Australia are also breaking ranks from US Empire’s dominance economically by seeking to become members of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. They clearly see the writing on the wall that China is fast replacing the United States soon emerging as the number one economic power. The age of US global hegemony as the sole global superpower bullying the rest of the world into submission and defeat is gradually coming to an end. The United States no longer is calling all the shots in the world. Its longtime strongest allies Europe, Australia and Japan are not so willing to act as US Empire puppets anymore. Long recognizing that the militarized US foreign policy destabilizing and impoverishing the Third World has imperialistically caused so much global destruction producing only failed state after failed state, much of the world sees the US has made the planet more armed and dangerous than ever before in human history. As such, in the eyes of much of the world’s nations, America has lost considerable respect, global influence and power.

It’s time for Americans to realize this humbling truth. The US Empire has had its full ride of conquering glory and domination, and now is experiencing the downswing of its historical decline. We Americans need to take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, beginning with 9/11 as the most heinous false flag in US history. The evidence exposing 9/11 as an inside job is just too much in our face to continue to ignore. Albert Einstein once said, “Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” Denial is a self-lie that will only expedite more mass killing. The overwhelming pile of facts are now just too plainly visible to continue believing Washington’s false narrative.

The psychology of denial that has so many Americans still unwilling to face the truth of course gets reinforced daily by the constant barrage of MSM-government lies and propaganda. Because the vast majority of Americans love the country they grew up in, to realize that their homeland they’ve always cherished and loved turns out to be a villainous Empire that’s the enemy of the entire world, betraying and enslaving its own people and beyond, sacrificing Americans’ well-being for global hegemony and full spectrum dominance is a very hard and bitter pill to have to swallow. It’s very similar to finding out your own father is a mass murderer.

Denial can understandably become the automatic reflexive reaction and prime defense mechanism used to squelch the cognitive dissonance (inner conflict when reality clashes with world-view) that arises when fathoming and learning how our own government can murder its own expendable citizens for its own sinister purposes. Facing this grim reality becomes so anxiety-provoking and so destabilizing to one’s world-view, it simply cannot be believed. So refusing to accept that our leaders can be capable of such evildoing becomes their blinded response by which millions of Americans maintain status quo of living their daily lives. Of course the diabolical system has them additionally addicted, distracted and bamboozled by their infinite means of escapism - dehumanizing toy gadgetry, video games, the Kardashians’ latest antics, or the hype of big money sports like March madness instead of heeding the very real March madness that has us robotically marching off doomsday cliff straight into world war, most Americans are either too preoccupied, too afraid or too stressed out just trying to survive to even notice.

After all, once one accepts the dirty lowdown truth, one is then forced into taking action in good conscience to do something about it. It’s a lot easier to lazily succumb to the feds’ brainwashing strategy of dismissing anyone who believes 9/11 was an inside job as a mere “conspiracy theorist” rather than look at the mountains of hard evidence. Those of us who realize the US government is constantly lying to us in its efforts to keep us dumbed down, controlled and obedient are not so easily dumbed down, controlled and obedient despite risking increasing negative consequences for speaking out against the oppressive government. Though we are the true patriots and many Washington insiders are the true traitors, as courageous dissidents for the sake of humanity we must resist and oppose the fascist totalitarian US government now targeting us as potential homegrown terrorists.

Because we refuse to accept the federal crime syndicate’s official dogma of lies and propaganda, and oppose its desecration of our civil liberties guaranteed us before 9/11 by our Constitution, we are now on growing watch lists that could easily turn into FEMA camp roundup lists once Obama declares martial law in America. As law-abiding citizens who know and accept the truth, we must hold the criminals accountable for betraying the very Constitution that they all swore oaths to protect and uphold. It’s a federal crime to violate their oaths while in office and treason is a high crime punishable up to death according to 18 US Code 2381:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their

enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason

and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but

not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

According to the above cited law, those criminals in Washington who are waging war against their own people now are guilty of treason giving the people plenty of reason for arresting and putting them on trial.

Every week we’re seeing ominous signs that the US dollar-petrodollar will soon be dropped as the standard international currency. As that ongoing process further erodes the dollar, the US economy could soon collapse. The doom and gloom warnings of the coming crash abound. Though this inevitable reality is more than probable, it may well produce the next false flag that provides the excuse Obama will use to implement martial law in America even during peacetime. Of course under the pretense of national emergency, Obama has executive order rights to shut down all internet access and activity, rendering us citizens even more susceptible to the abuses of unfolding tyranny.

At the same time, recently reelected war criminal Netanyahu is mouthing his typical crying foul chant with the “dangerous accord with Iran worse than Israel feared” over the prospect of the US coalition team negotiating an amicable treaty over Iran’s nuclear status as the March 31st deadline fast approaches. Despite all evidence in recent years pointing to Iran not developing nuclear weapons, Israel, Saudi Arabia and US Empire acting as the axis-of-evil is using the unraveling civil war now raging in Yemen to conveniently blame Iran for causing yet more insidious and relentless efforts to initiate war against Iran. Between sending NATO and heavy arms into Ukraine and this latest geopolitical chessboard aggression in Yemen, the evil crime syndicate representing the psychopathic sub-human species of Western oligarchs currently losing their power appears determined to instigate World War III.

What we are now witnessing in 2015 are the American Empire’s lies finally catching up to its Western oligarch puppet masters. The Western central banking cabal that runs the crime syndicate governments of the US-EU-NATO-Israel-Saudi axis-of-evil is all about promoting perpetual war. It has the earth drowning and suffocating in a cesspool of radiated ocean and poisoned freshwater, Monsanto saturated soil producing GMO-disease causing, chemical foods devoid of all nutrition, and increasingly unbreathable megalopolis air across the planet. For centuries it’s perpetrated a morally corrosive, predatory, unsustainable, broken economic and political system driven by the profit-greed motive that has enslaved the entire global population in irreversible debt. The race for World War III that this evil axis of power currently has the planet freefalling towards is out of sheer desperate diabolical madness in the grips of losing its absolute power. It’s finally time that the American citizens wake up from this post-apocalyptic Orwellian nightmare that’s befallen us before the oligarchs’ eugenics soft- and hard-kill final solution exterminates 13 out of 14 of us currently living and breathing on this earth.

The same propaganda tools that have been controlling the people for centuries are still being successfully used against us. Because Americans have been so conditioned into accepting lies as the truth, false flags have effectively begun every war the US has fought 217 out of its 239 years in existence. All these years later, it’s time for the misinformed, misled American population to finally smarten up once and for all and recognize that all life on planet earth is in very serious and grave danger now. Most of the world’s known this tragic reality for a long time as victims of the US Empire’s brutality. The very future survival of the human species hangs in the balance. It depends on us throwing off the shackles of ignorance that’s enslaved us, and as informed, committed, mindful and empowered citizens of the world to come together in solidarity to advance human evolution rather than allow it to be extinguished by a handful of criminal killer psychopaths.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 the United
States has claimed territorial rights to the Western Hemisphere, essentially
warning the rest of the world to back off from USA’s backyard. The American way
of proclaiming itself the big cheese of the New World manifested by quickly ousting
colonial competitor Spain from Florida and the Southwest and two decades later
declaring war on Mexico, stealing a third of its sovereign territory to ensure
that Texas, New Mexico and Arizona became part of the bountiful chosen nation fast
expanding from sea to shining sea. Next came more than a century of constant military interventions
from the 1850’s in Nicaragua and Panama that brought forced labor and slavery
to the indigenous population.

Long before the US became the global bully, it was the
Western Hemisphere’s neighborhood thug. The 1898 Spanish American War born of
the false flag sinking of the USS Maine facilitated colonial expansion and
occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Genocide-war
casualty expert RJ Rummel estimates up to near half a
million Filipinos died in the bloodbath when the US
military invaded, conquered and re-colonized the freshly independent nation of
the Philippines during the Spanish American War.

As the US ascended to global power throughout the course
of the following century, it became increasingly intolerant toward other
nations’ autonomy or any and all regional claims of a “Monroe Doctrine” of
their own. Having fought its own colonial wars far beyond its own hemisphere,
the United States increasingly engaged in tampering with other countries’
internal affairs, regularly resorting to assassination of foreign leaders and
inciting coups as it so chose around the world. And true to its New World
Doctrine, the US maintained tightest control over the hapless nations of Central
America and the Caribbean.

As examples of various “Monroe interventions,” a brief history
follows. In 1903 for global trading purposes the US wanted a canal, so it invaded
Panama, snatching up its land to construct and hold the Panama Canal from its
1914 opening up until 1999. Over this last century countless US Marine
invasions took place in Central American nations like Panama and Nicaragua.
Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean were also constantly victimized with military
aggression and regime changes, in Haiti right up to the present. US backed coups
of democratically elected leaders during the last half century alone occurred in
1964 Brazil, 1965 Dominican Republic, 1973 Chile (ushering in brutal dictator
Pinochet), 1973 Uruguay, 1980 El Salvador (that brought Reagan’s death squads
also to Nicaragua), a CIA linked plane crash in 1981killing Panama’s leader, and
more coups and invasions in 1982 and again 1983 in Guatemala and 1989 Panama.
And then there are the incessant economic sanctions and embargos used against smaller
nations like Cuba and Nicaragua that resist US oppression. Over the years thousands
of Latin Americans died in the name of America’s “manifest destiny.”

By the end of the twentieth century when the US
anointed itself as the only global superpower on the planet, American Empire powerbrokers
began their ambitious campaign of world domination against its defeated cold war
enemies still deemed its strongest potential threats. Thus the plan was launched
to systematically isolate Russia and China from the rest of the world by
implanting hostile puppet governments in every nation that borders them, with the
ultimate aim of placing missiles aimed at Russia, completely usurping all other
nations’ regional rights by expanding the Monroe Doctrine well beyond America’s
own hemisphere but to the entire globe.

Once the Soviet Empire was broken up in the early
1990’s, at this point no other country could dare make similar claim of
exercising any regional power over its neighbors anywhere in the world except
the mighty US Empire that self-justified its longtime double standard hypocrisy
always with its grandiose sense of empowered exceptionalism.
This notion of exclusive impunity that the US is simply immune from compliance
with any and all international laws and treaties including all Geneva
Convention or United Nations Charter rules just because it happens to be the most
powerful nation on earth meant that as the global village bully it can at will threaten,
impose, dictate, control and even destroy all other nations through
unchallenged global hegemony. And so goes the US foreign policy enraptured by
its own regime change madness to makeover any nation it so chooses using the worn
out lie of spreading democracy when it really spread its own selfish agenda of
destabilizing, plundering and enslaving in insurmountable debt every nation and
people possessing precious dwindling resources or geopolitical chessboard
significance to the US Empire as the self-serving master of the world. Without
as much as declaring war, the United States in recent years has constantly
violated international laws and committed countless war crimes invading,
occupying for decades at a time, raping and destroying nations like Afghanistan,
Iraq (several times over), Libya, and Syria (of course with a little proxy help
from its secretly created
and funded “terrorist” mercenary monster allies al Qaeda/ISIS),
never failing to leave demolished failed states in its wake.

Then just over a year ago the neocon megalomaniacs
assaulted another autonomous nation, investing $5 billion to subversively
overthrow another democratically elected president in Ukraine. Then when a vast
majority of ethnic Russians living in Crimea that for centuries were always
part of Russia voted overwhelmingly to once again become annexed, and President
Putin moved to protect both the citizens of Crimea as well as defend his
strategically located Russian naval base in Sebastopol, Crimea, suddenly the
world bully American Empire began its next propaganda
war in futile attempts to demonize Putin with nonstop lies and
false flags behind a thinly veiled design to manipulate the Russian leader into
reacting, thus serving as provocation for the US-NATO forces as the clear
aggressor to invade and occupy yet another country in yet another war. But this
time what could easily turn into World War III would be against a nuclear
powered enemy and would risk the end of all life on planet earth. Yet these
suicidal gestures of an evil Empire in freefall decline both morally and
economically are being puppeteered by Western oligarchs in the midst of losing
power and control to the emerging power of the East.
For many centuries the central
banking cabal has used war to drive both its power and profit.

On Tuesday by the overwhelming House
vote of 348-48, Congress moved forward with the Obama
plan to provide heavy armaments to the corrupt de facto Ukrainian government
despite Putin’s warnings and Europe’s ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict
through peaceful negotiations. The vast majority of treasonous American leaders
controlling the
US crime syndicate government possess absolutely no
regard for humanity, truth or justice and apparently are determined to plunge
the planet headlong into catastrophic world war. A year ago researchers concluded
the US government no longer represents the interests of American citizens but
instead those of the Western oligarchs, the 1% of the world’s richest
population of ruling elitists that as of next year will own more
wealth than the rest of us 99% of the 7.2 billion earth
inhabitants combined. Something’s demonically wrong and obscene with that NWO equation.

Yet with all this doom and gloom so rapidly unfolding
and accelerating during these first few months of 2015, there remains but one populated
continent on this earth that appears relatively free of US military domination
and control. That laudable distinction belongs exclusively to nations in the US
Empire’s own south facing backyard within the Western Hemisphere - South
America. Suffering centuries of abuse and exploitation as Empire’s so called
banana republics, despite their economic
challenges that remain to this day, Latin American nations are emerging as
a formidable political force endowed with natural resources and an empowering,
growing independence and defiance toward the global giant to the north.

Emboldened by the largest oil reserves on the planet,
this century has witnessed the charismatic leadership of the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez (until his death a couple years ago) leading
the continental rebellion against the United States, calling Bush
the “devil” before the UN, while calling upon South
America to develop its own self-protective line of defense - a walled off independence,
unity and solidarity away from the aggressive, controlling and destructive US
Empire’s global dominance.

Hugo Chavez led the way for fourteen years shunning
Washington’s claws bent on tapping into his nation’s vast oil reserves. But
Chavez used his nationalized oil company to provide important revenue to uplift
Venezuelans’ standard of living with improved educational opportunity,
increased hospitals, affordable housing and transportation infrastructure. Any time
a smaller
nation in the world rejects US Empire and its predatory system
of exploitation of the nation’s people and its land resources through privatized,
greed-driven transnational corporations, through lies and propaganda that
nation is invariably declared a US enemy. In other words, if a leader does what
is best for his or her nation’s residents producing economic growth and
prosperity for its own population, that nation is automatically targeted for “regime
change” attack economically, politically and often even militarily by the US Empire.
Viewed as a revolutionary champion of the people from humble roots much like
his own constituents, and willing to boldly challenge and successfully
outmaneuver blatant failed US attempts to overthrow him from power and temporarily
did in 2002 and failed in more attempts later, Hugo
Chavez overcame the Empire wrath and regional conflict with bordering Colombia
and ultimately embraced continental Latin unity as an emerging defense against
US imperialism.

The pivotal turning point came in August 2010 when
enough pressure was brought to bear on Colombia by Chavez and other neighboring
countries after Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe signed an agreement the year
before to allow eight
more US military bases. The nixed plan was ostensibly to
fight the same cocaine smuggling trade the US government makes billions in
profits from as well as defeat the leftist insurgent rebels operating inside
Colombia. Ultimately the Colombian courts wisely decided the bases were
“unconstitutional” because they were never approved of by the nation’s
legislators. It was simply a deal that the corrupt outgoing Colombian president
had acquiesced to after American Empire pressured for a stronger military
foothold on the continent. Though no new bases or additional US soldiers and
contractors would be coming to Colombia, 1400 US personnel that were already
part of a previously ratified agreement stationed at existing bases were
allowed to stay. As a result of the Colombian court decision, the US was
successfully banished from making any further inroads of a US military presence
inside South America.

This Colombian decision came just a year after Ecuador
gave
the boot to the US Air Force occupying an air base
sharing the runway of Manta’s city airport. The US base designed to be the primary South
American “drug interdiction” watchtower from the sky was formally closed in
2009 after the United States had invested $71 million in airport renovation and
over the last decade in operation had brought an annual revenue to the city of
$6.5 million.

But the city of Manta moved onto bigger and better
investments than the US Empire could offer with its thinly disguised
imperialistic hegemony. Instead Ecuador went ahead with joint business ventures
in partnership with both neighboring Venezuela and Hong Kong. Chavez made a sweet
deal with Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa to construct a $6
billion oil refinery on the outskirts of Manta. Meanwhile, a
Hong Kong firm secured a deal to finance and construct over a half billion
dollar deepest water port on the Pacific coast of South America that geographically
lies closest to Asia. Instead of giving the same half
bill over to the fake enemy terrorists ISIS in Yemen like stupid Empire
does resulting in a far more dangerously destructive world, China smartly invested
the same amount of money into our same hemisphere’s nations but in renewable
and sustainable infrastructure that offers win-win outcomes to both Asia and
South America. In contrast, the US foreign policy for too long has always
self-servingly invested in militarization and privatization that only benefits
a small ruling elite rather than nations and whole populations. What goes
around, comes around.

The U.S. stopped being
the benchmark of what is good for Latin America. Because Latin America did
everything that the US asked it to do and wasn't able to get out of poverty,
the North American myth lost political weight.

Latin American countries have long realized that the
drug cartels work hand in hand with US government agencies to export their illegal
drugs into North America. The US
government’s criminal enterprise is partnered by the
central banking cabal for safe money laundering. Just this week American Drug Enforcement
Agency personnel got busted partying
with drug cartel money.

The corrupt political system profiting from the international
drug trade has not been more apparent than in Central American nations where
local criminal cartels’ and Washington’s criminal interests appear one and the
same. Honduras readily comes to mind as the worst Central American victim of
another covert US-induced coup
in June 2009 when another democratically elected
leader closely associated with Chavez, President Manuel Zelaya, was ousted
because as a rancher he attempted to improve the lives of his indigenous agrarian
poor class. Honduras was targeted for regime change as Obama and his Secretary
of State Hilary Clinton’s strategy to roll
back democratic gains made in various countries during the Bush
years. After training virtually the entire Honduran officer corps, the US
planted a murderous military junta into power that’s been brutalizing Hondurans
as the murder
capital of the world ever since while partnering with the
local drug cartels, their criminal gangs and agents of the US government moving
drugs from South America into Mexico and North America. The 50,000
children largely from Honduras and El Salvador who showed up
at the US border last year was but one among many tragic outcomes of the
morally reprehensible US policy.

When Chavez died two years ago, the US realized that
his successor Nicolas Maduro was far more vulnerable as the US has repeatedly
attempted to undermine his power and position with its fanatical regime change
agenda. While Ukraine was deposed of its president a year ago last February,
CIA and State Department NGO’s were hard at work in Venezuela drumming up Maduro
opposition culminating in violent street protests not unlike those in Kiev. Like
clockwork a year later, Washington attempted yet another coup but once again
failed on Valentine’s Day this year. Obama recently hypocritically declared
Venezuela a threat to US national security, with more
outright lies as he reacts with sour grapes to his recent botched coup effort
and his jailed coup co-conspirators, attempting to scare weak links in both the
Venezuelan government as well as all the Latin American governments assessing
if he can lure any defectors away from their unified continental anti-Empire stance.

Leaders from Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador immediately
responded to Obama’s verbal attack on Venezuela, verbalizing strong
condemnation against his overt threats. If anything, the US president’s harsh
words that have no real consequence (other than certain Venezuelan families
cannot enter the United States) are in effect motivating South American nations
to rally around Maduro and strengthening their alliances and mutual support against
their common threat (not unlike Russia and China has been forced to do in
response to the US Empire renewing its cold war enemies).

Meanwhile, the designated military structure for US
presence in Latin America and the Caribbean - the US South Command – is hollow
and more in name only as it hardly has anything to command these days because
almost no US military outposts are located in the Western Hemisphere south of
the United States. Very nearly to a country, every government has either kicked
out the US military or has consistently refused to let the Empire wolf back in.
One too many invasions from the past have come to haunt the rejected US Empire
today. In fact, these days more often a visible Russian military presence is
occasionally observed on Latin soil or sailing in southern waters or docked in South
American ports than any US military deployments.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov last April
visited Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua and Peru. Additionally, Russian defense minister
Sergei
Shoigu even went further, stressing the importance that
Russian military forces should be assigned to foreign military bases, without
naming exactly where. It was likely more a public relations ploy to excite the
US national security neocons since clearly the Empire forces are being shunned
while Latin America courts favor with the Russians. South American nations are
unlikely to invite another foreign power to any permanent military bases since
they collectively are emerging as an autonomous and independent political force
unto themselves, and injecting Russia or the United States military into that
mix would be both disruptive and counterproductive.

In Central America only Honduras has US military
personnel stationed at Soto
Cano Air Base listed to provide medical support to
Hondurans as well as disaster relief. Another base located in El Salvador is
Comalapa Naval Base opened in 2000 after the 1999 US departure from Panama. Comalapa
employs just 25 US military and 40 civilian personnel (according to its
website). Its mission is primarily narco-surveillance. Two more small anti-drug
monitoring stations are located in the Caribbean Dutch territories on the
islands of Curacao and Aruba. An air station on the island of Antigua is in the
process of relocating to Western Australia. The radar station is moving to the
Pacific to mainly monitor China’s growing military satellite activity in that
part of the globe. Finally a secret black ops station in the Bahamas called
“Area 51 of the Caribbean” is said to develop new naval military technology.

But outside these small scale outposts according to
the Pentagon, no other active military bases are occupied by US armed forces.
South Command commander General
John F Kelly maintains that there is little current need
for deployment of US troops in southern nations of the Western Hemisphere. His
commander-in-chief notwithstanding, the general believes that no major security
issues or serious threats in Latin America warrant a greater US military
presence since numerous global hotspots that do require American military
forces obviously take priority. Additionally, recent fiscal budget cuts factored
in are also given to explain the near complete lack of US military presence in
Central and South America. But then these “official reasons” sound more like a
face-saving rationale rather than admitting the truth that the dominant mindset
of Latin Americans who at one time chanted in protest “Yankee go home!” are now
in unison and solidarity chanting even louder “Yankee stay home!”

What does unfortunately remain open as the Caribbean
blight on the US Empire is an old US naval base operating since 1903 - Cuba’s
Guantanamo Bay. It’s the Western Hemispheric mecca for housing illegal, unaccounted
for US torture, false, unjustified imprisonment and grossest inhumanity still
going on daily today since 2002. Though Obama has continued for seven years
feebly promising and vowing to close it, the puppet president has yet to keep
his word. Last week a teenager asked the president what he would like to change
from the first day he was elected and Obama answered, “I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day.”
That lame response failed to bolster his nonexistent credibility. After all, he
also promised to be the “most open and transparent president in US history.”
The man ad nauseam throughout his regime has only proven he cannot be trusted. But
then neither can 99% of the United States leaders in government or the
military.

It’s a bit of irony that the global superpower killing
machine occupies over 1000 military posts throughout every corner of the globe
except one, the one sitting in its south-side backdoor no less – Latin America.
All those past military interventions, coups and tyrannical violence and injustice
toward Latin America have soured relations now. The up and coming nations south
of our border were brutally beaten down for more than a century by the US and
now that they are rising in power with friendlier ties to cold war enemies
Russia and China, once again karma’s come home to roost, biting the big evil
Empire squarely in its imperial ass.

Joachim
Hagopian is a West
Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on
his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on
US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the
military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as
a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter
century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.

Friday, March 20, 2015

“In war, truth is the first casualty.” - Attributed to Aeschylus (525-456 BC)

Oops! There goes another half billion dollars’ worth of war material lost to another enemy. This time in Yemen where until a few weeks ago President Obama could readily tout Yemen as the one foreign policy success story he could always hang his hat on. Yemen was the one place on this planet where Obama could avoid having to admit his foreign policy is not a total and abject failure. Yemen was where he could rationalize that his killer drone policy was actually working at keeping the enemy at bay. So what if most of the people killed by drones are innocent (over 96% by one recent analysis), many children and women that happened to get in the way. A little so called collateral damage never hurt the mighty US Empire’s warring ways.

In January Yemen’s US puppet government was overthrown by Iranian backed Shiite Houthi rebels affiliated with al Qaeda factions. These insurgent forces generated increasing strength over time in large part provoked by Obama’s predator drone policy regularly attacking and killing hundreds of mostly innocent civilians in Yemen since 2002. Last month during the ensuing unrest in the Yemen capital Sanaa, US personnel apparently were forced to close its embassy, having to evacuate US citizens from what’s now become another openly hostile, unsafe nation for Americans in the Arabian Gulf.

Subsequently the Pentagon in recent weeks had to slink before closed sessions of Congress to inform them that it fears that al Qaeda in Yemen now has in its possession countless small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles, aircraft and other large scale combat supplies that enable yet more so called Islamic extremists to wage yet more terrorism and war into the future. Pressed to account for the whereabouts of the weaponry, the Pentagon brass simply shrugged their shoulders and alluded to it most likely being in the wrong hands now. An anonymous legislative aide could only conclude, “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone.”

This much of the confiscated aid presumed missing and irretrievable was released:

And now just days after this Pentagon fiasco goes public, the latest just breaking story of yet more horrible news rubbing salt into Obama’s fresh licked wound is today’s announcement that four suicide bombers calling themselves an Islamic State branch in Yemen just killed at least 137 people in two mosques inside the Yemen capital of Sanaa. This level of violence in this war torn country is the worst in decades.

This disastrous series of events in Yemen is painfully reminiscent of last June’s ISIS invasion of Iraq and its capture of that nation’s second largest city Mosul. In both cases US trained and funded national security forces refused to even fight the rebels. Also rebels in each nation took possession of critical military bases. Speculation abounds in both cases over whether the order to cut and run came from the weak national government or with far more sinister implication the order each time might have originated from high command in Washington DC to willfully allow the hostile rebel forces to run amok seizing control of both countries. By simply abandoning both their military missions and positions, the national security forces in both Iraq and Yemen allowed al Qaeda militants free access to large arsenals of US weaponry and equipment.

However, it’s become increasingly clear that the US has been covertly financing and arming the Islamic extremists known as ISIS as its proxy mercenaries on the ground in both Syria and Iraq all along. So this takeover of yet more US weapons suddenly in Yemen smells like another rat. In all likelihood the United States crime cabal of a traitorous government may be simply capitalizing on the latest events in Yemen as yet another boost to keeping its state sponsored war on terror actively raging on into the indefinite future. As such the US may have actually planned the Yemen coup and through deceitful means purposely given the arms over to another so called fake enemy. Also the US propaganda machine can now take advantage of generating lots of negative publicity from these turn of events by blaming Iran for the Yemen instability since Iran has purportedly been backing the Shiite Houthi rebels currently in power.

Recall it was Yemen on order from General Petraeus in December 2009 that launched a cruise missile that killed 52 members of several innocent Yemen families early on in the Obama presidency. It was determined that 41 were civilians and 14 were women and 21 children. Petraeus proceeded to lie about all but three of the dead were terrorists. But before his lies came Obama pressuring the Yemen puppet government to lie about falsely admitting it was a Yemen missile that was responsible. However, an astute young journalist at the crime scene based on photos was able to identify the missile as belonging to America. Facing the embarrassment of scandal, it was Obama who then further pressured his Yemeni puppets to actually arrest the journalist for merely doing his job as a good and honest journalist. So after being falsely imprisoned because of Obama, later when the president of Yemen was about to release the reporter, again it was vengeful Obama who interceded and strong-armed Yemen to keep the journalist who dared print the lowdown truth exposing the US atrocity committed on his nation wrongfully in prison for three years.

This is a story Obama would like to forget, kind of like Benghazi. But rather than be honest and openly admit error for killing innocent families in Yemen, both Petraeus and Obama chose to lie about what they’d done. But Obama immorally went further far beyond just lying in punishing the young Yemeni reporter as criminal reprisal. In his first year in office this piece of evidence exposed Obama for being full of it when during his campaign he promised that his presidency would be far different from his psychopath predecessors Bush and Cheney, assuring the American voters that his administration would be the most “honest and transparent” in American history. Of course he’s only proven to be the opposite as the most secretive and oppressive administration in history far beyond even the Bush crime family.

The next Obama story and Yemen scandal to come along a couple years later was Obama acting as judge, jury and executioner in his choice to kill three Americans in Yemen. Without going through the “trouble and inconvenience” of rounding the first two Americans up and granting them their constitutional rights to a fair judicial process and trial for their alleged close ties to al Qaeda extremism, Obama defended his decision to simply murder them outright with a killer drone. Then just two weeks later at another location in Yemen out of pure spite and evil, Obama assassinated one of the earlier victim’s 16-year old son who had absolutely no affiliation or involvement with al Qaeda or terrorism. The Colorado born kid was simply hanging out with friends and relatives eating at a restaurant when all of them were suddenly blown away as totally innocent victims of Obama’s state sponsored terrorism from the skies. And the MSM presstitutes calling themselves journalists never even had the balls or decency to confront the murdering president on his crimes. Instead they and the American public heard Obama’s dismissive press secretary defend Obama saying the boy “should have had a more responsible father.” Then the annoyed Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid when facing questions told the world that if anybody deserved to die it was those three Americans.

Later still defending his murder of Americans, our president actually had the criminal audacity to matter-of-factly defend why he can foresee justifiably killing more Americans on US soil in the future. If he deems any of us as much as an enemy sympathizer, or for that matter a dissident opposing the current totalitarian police state, our Democratic president apparently will suffer no sleepless nights nor apparently have any qualms about murdering us right here in our homes in own country.

The psychopathic leaders of our nation will never ever admit to error nor having made mistakes and will further never express any remorse whatsoever over any of their previous decisions and actions, however heinous or appalling. But instead they will always calmly and coolly rationalize and readily justify them – displaying all the classic symptoms of true psychopaths. But then when you are a prominent member of the United States crime syndicate government, it mandatorily goes with the turf.

So Obama has a rather unpleasant checkered past he’d just as soon forget when it comes to his own Yemen foreign policy. Undoubtedly that was all the more reason his longtime predator drone, low intensity presence in Yemen just had to be his one shining example and model of successful foreign policy that was actually working as he’d planned. But four months after Obama was bragging about Yemen, its government fell to yet more terrorists. So now even that flimsy delusional cover has blown up in his face with this latest breaking scandal that the commander-in-chief’s Pentagon brass cannot even account for more than $500 million dollars’ worth of military aid sent to the Yemen government since 2007.

Yemen was the one struggling, troubled nation on the Arabian peninsula that Obama till recently could proudly claim that his fundamental shift away from those costly protracted war debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq begun under his neocon predecessors were once and for all history. Under Obama’s watch his foreign policy approach would be to skillfully and “humanely” avoid those kind of bloody drawn out wars that Americans eventually grow tired of. Instead his new policy of low intensity wars around the world using smaller Special Operations forces would circumvent the need for a large commitment of US troops on the ground. Instead Obama favored quietly replacing those long, costly and unpopular quagmires with his own low key, “out of sight, out of mind” dirty little secret wars utilizing the latest modern stealth warfare that’s quickly become his own personal favorite and his signature trademark – the one that in his weekly meetings with intel and military brass Obama himself got to decide who was to live and who was to die, using those magical predator drones. And now our president wants to spread his brand of terror around the world by selling drones to “US allies.” Killer drones always seemed cleaner and more surgically precise to him, after all no more messy, unsightly American blood spilled on foreign soil but only that of those tan-skinned Moslems that after 9/11 nobody really liked anyway. And even their red blood was/is never shown to Americans back home thanks to the sanitized version of propaganda war known as embedded presstitute journalism.

But now that the cat’s out of the bag in Yemen, Obama’s best laid plans have once again been foiled by his brilliant Pentagon war strategists “losing” yet another arsenal of US military arms. That military aid intended for Yemen’s US puppet government to defend itself from insurgency recently got handed over to the big bad al Qaeda wolf that’s been banging at the government door. Yet with all the intelligence forces of the CIA and Special Ops stationed there in Yemen for years, we’re supposed to believe that they never saw this latest coup even coming - more bullshit. Lo and behold, more bad guys a few weeks ago were easily able to overthrow another weak, corrupt, US installed puppet and managed to abscond with over $500 million worth of war weapons that can now be used against America at some point in the future.

Where have we seen this rerun before? Oh yeah, last year in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Libya, come to think of it, wherever Empire goes, certainly all over the Middle East and Africa we’ve observed this same inexcusable pattern before. As far as keeping the US war on terror compliments of the crime syndicate in Washington going forever, pretending to lose weapons to the enemy always seems to work on the misfed, dumbed down American population. What they aren’t counting on are the fed up (as opposed to misfed) American citizens who’ve learned to not be fooled by the sinister sleight of hand disinformation trickery that our own government and mainstream media are constantly and deceptively attempting to pull the bull over our eyes.

Let’s count the ways in a brief recap of past waste and lost war material during this last decade alone in Afghanistan and Iraq. First off, well over $6 trillion dollars have already been spent on criminally destroying those two nations with significant residual damage done to the struggling US economy during a stagnating recession era, and that’s not even including the far greater and tragic human cost to so many people’s lives. A year ago it was reported that the US was leaving behind in Afghanistan $6 billion worth of 170 million pounds of equipment including 850 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, furniture, non-classified computers, generators, chemical toilets, you name it, and the US government left it. Over 387 million pounds of scrap were sold to local Afghans for $46.5 million that at least got recouped.

Apparently a huge surplus of those MRAP vehicles that were shipped to the warfront were actually never needed nor used. More Empire wastes had to be given away or scrapped in Afghanistan than in Iraq because Afghanistan has less capacity to operate and maintain the equipment than the Iraqis. Parts shortages also became a major problem in attempting to salvage equipment. Much has been donated to the national security forces but tons of wasted equipment and supplies were lazily discarded that could have gone to the Afghan people. Just as the war itself was a tragic and costly bloody mess that never did any good for either the US but especially Afghanistan, so went the trillions of wasted taxpayer dollars decimating America’s middle class that bore the brunt of funding that horrific, senseless war.

Another near half million weapons in Afghanistan were never even accounted for. American oversight was very poor, but Afghanistan’s inventory mechanism was virtually non-existent, so concluded the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Last year Vice reported that despite allocating two-thirds of a billion dollars’ worth of weapons and equipment to Afghan security forces, hundreds of thousands may be lost in abandoned warehouses in unknown locations or worse yet sold on the enormous black market that’s always operated throughout the dozen year war in Afghanistan. Similar to the recent Yemen theme, most items sold in the underground market ultimately ended up in Taliban hands.

Overwhelming evidence accumulated over the years verifying that tons of US arms and ammunition procured by the Taliban enemy were eventually used to kill Americans, portending a repeated tragic future scenario with the recent loss of weapons in Yemen. High incidence of the National Afghan Army selling US issued war goods to black market or directly to Taliban was extremely rampant. Gross acquisition errors caused a surplus of 83,184 unutilized AK-47’s much of which quickly made its way to being sold on the black market and then utilized by the enemy. Just to get an idea of how serious this problem was of missing US equipment and arms falling into the wrong hands, in certain districts it surpassed the opium trade within the world’s largest opium producing nation.

Of course the US government has been criminally involved in drug smuggling for decades, even misusing US military personnel to act as opium field guards. Allegedly that was among the burning issues that motivated the not-so-friendly fire assassination and scandalous cover-up of NFL star Pat Tillman. As in Iraq, corruption at all levels and ranks by both civilian and military Americans as well as Afghanis plagued both the waste problem as well as the war effort. Also as the longest running war in US history dragged on, with alarming frequency national Afghan soldiers began turning on and killing their American trainers, sadly amounting to a third of the US deaths in Afghanistan during 2012, the same year that more American veterans were committing suicide than were dying in combat on the Afghan warfront.

This same unending pattern of waste, fraud, theft, corruption and ongoing “lost” weapons and equipment was notoriously present during the decade long war in Iraq and now with Iraq War III it’s still going on to this day. Back in 2007 it was reported that while General Petraeus was tasked with training Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, 190,000 AK-47’s and pistols went unaccounted for. 30% of the weapons slated to Iraqi forces were unknown. In Afghanistan that figure rose to 43%. As of the latest figures from August 2011, an estimated $60 billion in war funds were lost to waste, poor planning and corruption fraud in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In four years of continued boondoggling, that number is likely up to $80 billion now and still rising.

This loss of US weapons has become the emerging standard US foreign policy, pretend through gross incompetence and mismanagement (having had so much practice at it) that you “accidentally on purpose” misplace billions of dollars’ worth of killing machine equipment just so those Islamic extremists we love to hate so much can get their grimy little hands on it. The Special Ops US advisors apparently stationed there in Yemen all these years suddenly became frightened when those insurgent meanies, the Shiite Houthis, successfully pulled off an “unanticipated” coup and our fiercest, best and brightest black ops warriors suddenly had to flee from the capital for their lives last month only to allow the barbarians crashing at the gate to conveniently take possession of all their left behind war toys. Déjà vu all over again. Not only does America lose all its wars, the last victory coming 70 years ago, but the US also seems to always end up losing all its weapons too. No wonder the great American Empire-turned paper tiger keeps losing war after war virtually nonstop since World War II, it can’t seem to hold onto its billions of tax paid for weapons.

Or the more likely explanation behind these recurring Empire follies is the ruling crime syndicate that’s infiltrated and treasonously taken over the US government by design is supposed to lose all its wars in faithful obedience to its New World Order agenda - destabilizing every Third World nation possessing oil/wanted precious natural resources by secretly creating, funding, training and yes, arming the so called enemy, never failing to employ those fanatical Islamic extremists those dumbed down, ignorant masses xenophobically love to fear and hate. This way we keep the ruling elite crime families like Bush and the Rockefellers happy by simply invoking the familiar “threat to national security” card as justification for imposing Orwellian police state counterterrorism laws at home and throughout the world.

Creating failed states all over the globe that in turn opens the floodgate to predatory NWO vultures like the transnationals, the World Bank and IMF loans fast moving in to further rape, plunder and enslave yet more of the world population buried forever deep in Ponzi scheme debt. And even though those paid mercenary stooges called al Qaeda or ISIS or Islamic jihadists are not practicing Moslems at all but simply paid mercenary thugs doing the crime syndicate Empire’s dirtiest bidding, with enough propaganda lies accompanied by the bi-monthly dog and pony show of the latest beheading, you’ve successfully manipulated your forever war on terror. Works every time. That way the earthly raping, pillaging and plundering can go on with even more of a vengeance that without this hired gun villain playing their part, none of this terror could even remotely be possible. And just like that after the international crime cabal’s inside 9/11 job, whallah! The New World Order is here.

In the same way that the US is repeatedly getting caught red-handed maintaining the supposed enemy’s supply line in Iraq and Syria with regular airdrops of necessary food and arms supplies, the latest uncovered evidence released by Iraqi ground forces wiretapping conversations between US military and ISIS, this pretend game to also keep losing US weapons to the fake enemy is another sinister lie that’s just too preposterous and unbelievable to continue swallowing. You can fool some of the people as dumbed down as they are some of the time with nonstop propaganda bullshit, but the US government cannot get away with continuing to fool all of us all the time. At this point enough of us are on to them, having arrived a while ago at the realization that the ugly truth is that the criminal syndicate posing as the US federal government is the treasonous true enemy of its own people as well as the entire world. Its relentless agenda of perpetrating nothing but more war, lies and bloodshed on the earth’s population must be stopped and the traitors in our own government must be held accountable.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.